


Sunflower

by TheTeaDetective



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Other, Rape Aftermath, Who I love, but this takes place after she escapes so trigger warning, elementary drabble, just a drabble about kitty, rape not mentioned explicitly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 09:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTeaDetective/pseuds/TheTeaDetective
Summary: Even the most broken and scarred of sunflowers can grow tall and strong.





	Sunflower

**Author's Note:**

> I think the last thing I published properly was 2015? So it's been a while.
> 
> I apologise in advance for any typos that may appear, my laptop is just awful, and so I have had to write this on my phone, which is not ideal really. Please feel free to highlight any I have missed in the comments and I will amend. Love you, bye!

Her parents are unbearable in the days that follow her escape. Her mother means well, but she constantly asks questions that simply cannot be answered.

‘Are you sure you can’t remember what he looked like?’

‘I’ve already said Mum, I only heard his voice. Nothing else’.

No, not nothing else. She had felt him too. She still did.

Her father stays quiet. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all, which suits her just fine.

Her mother stares at her. ‘It’s all right now,’ she says.

It isn’t, things aren’t ever going to be all right again.

* * *

When she is released from the hospital, her mother and father make her come home. They don’t want her to return to her house share in London. She isn’t sure which one would be worse, so she agrees to go home.

She spends days in her bedroom, the door shut tightly against the rest of the world. She flinches now when anyone comes near.

On the fifth day, her grandmother comes to visit. Her mother tries to make her come out, but she screams into her pillow. _Leave me alone, leave me alone._

Quiet. A note is slipped under the door. On it her grandmother has drawn a sunflower.

* * *

When she was little, she used to help her grandmother in the garden. Granny would plant all sorts of flowers, and once they bloomed, Granny would draw them.

Granny's favourites were always the sunflowers. She would nurture them in the greenhouse, and move them once they were big enough to go outside.

Once, when they were moving them, one of the sunflowers snapped in the middle of the stem. She had cried, but Granny simply said ‘It is all right, it will just need a little extra help to remember what it is. That it needs to grow. We can help it heal’.

Granny fetched some twine and made her hold the two halves together while she bound it together.

They moved the Sunflower outside with the rest and tightly tied bamboo sticks to it to keep it upright.

* * *

She clutches the note, eyes wide. Through the door, Granny says “Do you remember the sunflower my darling?’

‘Yes’, she replies hoarsely. ‘When I came back after we replanted it, it had healed, but there was a scar around the stem.’

It had been raised, pale and ugly.

‘A scar, yes, but you are forgetting something else. That sunflower grew stronger and taller than all the rest. You may be scarred, you may be broken, but when you find the thing that helps bind you back together, you will grow strong and tall again.’

She cries and the door is no longer tightly shut. She finds a little solace in her grandmother’s words.

She moves out a week later, and changes her name. Her parents object, but only a little. She names herself Katherine, Kitty, after her grandmother.

Years later, she finds Sherlock and Joan. She grows tall and strong again.

**Author's Note:**

> Note about sunflowers: I used to garden a lot, but I don't so much now, too fatigued to do it. :( But when I was in my teens, I was in a garden club at school (I know, how cool am I right??), and we had a greenhouse of our own to grow stuff in, it was great. We grew sunflowers, and one of them actually did break in half when we were trying to move it. I bound it together to see if it would help, I figured if we can fix our bones, then a flower can heal as long as it is supported. It healed and had a scar, but it was the tallest and strongest of all of the sunflowers we grew that year. I was very proud of it every time I saw it.


End file.
